Back to the Stone Age: Low-Tech Expense Tracking

As many of you know, before I was a GRS staff writer, I was a GRS reader and active commenter. I’d say the bulk of my early personal-finance education came from this website, and it’s most definitely the resource I credit for spurring me to get serious about paying off debt and saving money.

So last year when J.D. started talking about falling off the tracking-every-penny wagon, I winced. I haven’t been tracking my spending, either. Ever since our income went up last year, I’ve been satisfied that we’re saving enough — more than 55% of our income. We have no debt, we have targeted accounts for irregular expenses, and we pay our credit card bill in full every month. We’re definitely doing well, but the more J.D. wrote about getting back to basics, the more I started to think that my reasoning was just a cop-out. He’s always a few steps ahead of me, it seems!

Tracking for peace of mind
Like J.D., I don’t like the “financial black box” of not knowing where our money is going. Did we spend more on groceries than usual this month? Approximately how much are we spending on gas? I have no idea!

I don’t need to account for every penny, but I’d like a general idea of how we’re doing. It’s too easy to dismiss expenses because we’re doing relatively well with our savings, or because we forgo a lot of extras like cable TV and eating out regularly.

Also, it’s less fun to spend money when I don’t track it. I believe that money is a tool, and that some of it should be saved for the future and some of it should be enjoyed now. But when I’m not exactly sure how much “fun money” we’ve been spending, it’s harder to enjoy spending it. Last week, for example, I made a couple of purchases and felt a little buyer’s remorse, but only because I worried that I was forgetting about other expenses. If I knew we’d allotted, say, $200 to freely spend, and I was within that limit, I wouldn’t have given the purchase a second thought. I could have just enjoyed it.

Past tracking attempts
I’ve tried more than once to stay on the money-tracking bandwagon. I tried Quicken, but it did so much more than I needed it to do and categorizing each expense and reconciling accounts got tedious (maybe the newer versions are more user-friendly?).

I tried Mint, but some accounts wouldn’t update, and there were major glitches that threw off my numbers in a big way. For example, my “personal items” category, which is under $50 each month, mysteriously showed more than $400, but when I tried to view the itemized expenses, the system would time out. When I added it up by hand, it was nowhere near $400. I contacted customer service, but after weeks of waiting, there was no fix and no help, so I quit using Mint. I tried again several months later, but one of my accounts updated so rarely that, again, it wasn’t worthwhile.

I feel like I’ve spent far too much time downloading, uploading, troubleshooting, and e-mailing customer service reps. Tracking my money does not need to be this complicated (though I thought using technology would simplify the process). No wonder I keep dropping the habit — it’s been tedious and time-consuming!

Keeping it simple
Starting February 1st, I decided I’d track my expenses again, but this time, I’m keeping it simple. No software, no web, no syncing — just a small notebook tucked in my bag. In it, I have a page dedicated to each spending category (groceries, gas, bills, etc.) and on each page I record the following information about each purchase:

Date

What I bought

Cash, check, debit card, or credit card

Running total for the month

I plan to keep the spending categories broad, since all I’m after is a general idea of where our money is going, and since a complicated system doesn’t seem to work for me in the long-term. I think that’s the key: Experiment until you find a system that works for you. That’s the only way you’ll stick to it. I quit when I got tired of uploads and downloads or when I encountered a glitch. But finding the right system takes trial and error, and I gave up too soon on something as important as tracking my spending.

I’m feeling good about the new plan, and I’ll report back after trying it out for awhile. Until then, what different methods have you used to track your expenses? What systems did you drop, which have you maintained, and why? And, more to the point, do you have any tips for low-tech expense tracking like I’ve been trying to do?

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Though I am late to reading this article, the subject remains very true. I have tried the above and countless spreadsheets. The problem with the computer solutions is the wealth of distractions whether it be the learning, the glitch fixing, the categorizing, or the endless fussing with new possibilities. I am moving to a bound notebook, and even though I’m not sure how I’ll separate the daily transactions from the account ledgers and the financial statements, there is something about the physicality of the notebook itself that is appealing.

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CincyCat

I download our bank statements in .CVS format, then upload them to a home-made Access database.

From there, it’s just a quick sweep thru the month’s transactions to add a “Category” to each record from a drop-down list.

I can then report on the data any way I want! Well, almost any way… I’m still puzzling out how to set up a “year in review” crosstab (pivot table style) report, showing the months across the top & the categories across the side. I’m *almost* there! 🙂

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Dividends Warrior

Hi April,

Thanks for sharing!^^

These methods are really practical.

Cheers.

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bg

Just two weeks ago I tried to track cash expenses again but I truly, horribly suck at that and I’m kind of done with it, because it always just ends in frustration.

I’ve been reading this blog for about two years now and I track most of my spending by paying with a debit card so that the sums appear in my banking account. This way, I could pinpoint expensive areas in my life in my Excel sheet and reduce these costs.

I’ve just started a project in another city and instead of taking the quick but expensive apartment offers, I’ve spent two weeks in hotels to have the time to find a good&cheap apartment and it worked out. I’m back at riding 2.class in trains instead of 1. class. I took a cheaper cellphone provider. This blog has changed my way of thinking about money but I like to work on controlling the big spending areas, and not hunt down every Euro.

Being self-employed, I need to have a great tracking of business expenses – but in the personal area, I quite hate doing it down to the tiny sums.

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bethh

My method is super bare bones (though it sounds complicated now that I’ve written it down!). I track my spending in a small notebook (maybe 3×5 when closed). Each month gets a 4-page allotment.

The top 2/3 of page 2 is all my grocery expenses. The bottom 1/3 of page 2 is my entertainment (netflix, movies, concerts, theater tix).

All of page 3 is all the rest of my expenditures for the month, just jotted down as they occur. If that page starts to get full I know I’ve been spending more frequently than usual!

Page 4 is where the magic happens: I sort the expenses from page 3 into 11 budget categories, add up all my expenses, and compare them to my income for the month.

Every six months I have a chart that compares the spending for each month in each budget category so I can see if I’m creeping up or not. I also get the average expense and compare it to the averages for the previous years.

I’ve been doing this since mid-2007 and it’s really awesome to see the longterm information pile up. I will be devastated if my notebook gets lost though!

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Jeff

It’s weird to hear that youve been having trouble with mint. I find it extremely user friendly and have had few problems with it. I use it to track my expenses and have had few problems with it, none major.

My problem with going “low tech” is that I’m not the only with expenses. My wife spends more than I do of course 🙂 and the problem is trying to merge our spending. That’s why mint is so handy.

Even so, I like the idea of dropping technology and going old school. We need more of that in the world these days.

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Kristina

I created a great spreadsheet in Excel and since my husband and I use Bank of America for our everyday debit purchases, I can just download the transactions directly from their website. I can copy that download directly into my spreadsheet, do some quick tagging, and voila!
Granted, it doesn’t track any cash that comes in, but it does track ATM withdrawls…so I feel good that most of our ‘important’ dollars are accounted for. We kind of consider small cash influxes our free money 🙂

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Beth

My husband and I have been tracking every penny from 1995 to 2010, after reading Your Money or Your Life. Right now we use Microsoft Money because the program came with the computer. My husband likes it better than any other financial software and he has used them all (it was his business, writing and using tracking software). Recently he has become quite ill and I have taken over the finances. I enter all spending the day I spend, but I no longer “reconcile” our cash account. I really love knowing where our money is spent. I will continue to track my expenses after my husband dies, because it will be really important for me to know what my expenses will be. We are in retirement and income will be limited.

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Judy

I recently tried Mint, but became very frustrated with it and rather obsessive about checking to see if my accounts would ever update or if it got my transactions right. I am also back to the basics – recording my spending in my planner and trying to stick to cash.

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Menno

My solution is a single page spread sheet that lists monthly income and monthly expenses that are recurring each month. Using this, and the current balance on my account, I have an up-to-date view of the minimum available amount for other expenses that are not recurring (e.g. food, incidental travel, etc.)
Every time an ‘expected’ expense has been paid, I tick its box, thereby updating the available amount. It’s a simple solution that gives me exactly the information I need for deciding whether I can afford other unplanned expenses.

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Simon Collis

I used to account for everything and have lots of spreadsheets going on my old Psion 3a… well the 3a is still around, but nowhere near as healthy as it used to be. It needs a new case, new system buttons – it’s a frail old thing these days.

Anyhow, I’ve recently (finally) worked out GnuCash and although the use of accounts rather than categories seems really odd at first I’ve actually quite taken to it. Of course, being free software (free as in speech not as in beer, although it doesn’t cost anything), GnuCash appeals to both my frugal and hackerly sides 🙂

I don’t track every penny, but certainly every withdrawal, cheque payment – I even enter payments for the entire month before they’re made so that I know I won’t spend the money and go overdrawn.

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Cassie

I recently returned from a short vacation with my sister. Because we were splitting expenses, I noted each purchase on my phone as they were incurred. It only took a second to record Cab-$20-me or Dinner-$34-her. When we returned I totaled the expenses divided by two and we settled up. It was much easier then dividing as we went. It was so easy I’ll do it from now on whether or not I’m sharing expenses.

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misty

I track every penny for personal and business. It is not hard, it is not complicated and I use Quicken Home & Business 2010. I have been a Quicken user since 2004 and love it. I know you said that it was too tedious for you, but if you setup all the downloads, you have to manually enter very little and just reconcile each account to a bank/cc statement. You can customize your own accounts very easily and it is a breeze. Takes me 10 minutes a week and I know exactly where I stand. Can I suggest you give it another try? There are lots of free excel templates out there too to help you make a budget…you can find them at http://www.score.org and http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/templates/. I wish you the best at getting back on track!

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Marcella

I love my excel spreadsheet! Once set up, it takes 30secs to input spending each day. I track every category on a monthly, quaterly and annual basis.

Categories are in columns across the sheet. In rows, I show a budget for each category and my spending as both a dollar total and % of the budget. I show these all as monthly, quarterly and annual figures. I enter spending in the bottom half of the spreadsheet and add up the totals using a simple sum function. I annotate the spending with a comment if needed. At the end of each month I dump the spending data in another spreadsheet and then just keep the monthly total to add to the totals from the previous 11 months to help calculate the annual/quarterly budget performance.

I have a second sheet that tracks my long term savings, which includes various sinking funds. The sinking funds include one off annual costs like house or car insurance, as well as long term sinking funds for renovations. All these sinking funds are “saved” in my mortgage as extra funds that I can redraw at any time. In the mean time, these funds are reducing the interest I pay.

One thing I do not do is track cash flow. I put everything (even bills) on CC and pay that off in full every month. I am also not super strict on meeting my monthly budget categorys. As long as I am not consistently going over budget and the quarterly and annual costs are OK, I do not sweat a month where I got 10% over on groceries, since I will probably be 10% under the next month.

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Phil Bryant, CEO

I track expenses in a few overall buckets. Home, Food, Transportation, Health, Luxury, etc. And there’s a final bucket for “Everything Else”.

I have an easy way to track all of this. I have one credit card (or checking account) for each bucket. I just make sure that I use the right card each time I spend money.

Super-easy, and this system also works with mint.com for deeper analysis.

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Dana

Checking accounts come with checkbook registers, useful for both check and debit card transactions. But I wanted to track my cash spending too, and track other accounts that don’t come with registers. It occurred to me I could use a checkbook register for all those purposes.

But checkbook registers purchased from check printers are ridiculously expensive for what they are. So I looked on eBay.

Bingo.

Bought myself a nice dozen or so of them for about half the price the check printers were asking. Now I’m set for a while.

When I am keeping up with this I write down transactions in the registers, enter then into Gnucash to let it do all the math for me and then I can print out whatever charts I like, if I’m into that sort of thing.

It isn’t automated but I grew up with snail mail and real dial phones. I don’t necessarily need everything automated.

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Brian

I prefer gnucash over excel or paper based.

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Inge

I am using Microsoft Money. I live in Indonesia and Quicken just does not have enough digits to accommodate the number of 0’s. Quicken can track only up to 100,000,000 while in Indonesia 100,000,000 is only around USD11,000.

I’ve been tracking my money diligently since 2005. I know exactly how much I spent, where I spent it and for what.

The wonderful thing is that since I tracked my expenses diligently, my net worth has increased significantly over time.

I’ve been trying to encourage my family and friends to do the same, but it is really not that easy. I am glad that through this site, a lot of people are hopping on this expense tracking bandwagon.

May all be happy

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Erica

After tracking my expenses, I started using an envelope system for pet expenses, car expenses, and human expenses (groceries, haircuts, entertainment, etc. –everything that isn’t billed monthly). I don’t feel like I need to track how much I spend on groceries each week (as it varies from zero to $45 max) or haircuts ($20 every three months or so), but I do feel like I have a good idea of those expenses, thanks to previous tracking and dedicated envelope usage.

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sarah

I’ve never bothered tracking my every penny… I’d actually like to but my hub is one of those smart but super forgetful and disorganized people. The money he spends goes into a black hole 😛 As long as it’s not very much, I just don’t worry about it!

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William Bowen

My wife and I split on how to keep track of our expenses. I’ve always been lax about it. I check statements to make sure there are no fraudulent charges, but I rarely go over things that carefully. In contrast, she carefully accounts for each receipt and charge. In the last year, we had our third child and I opened my own business. Now, I find it’s changing so I am keeping on top of the charges I make more carefully and she’s being a little more relaxed (although with three kids that may be the wrong word). I don’t think either method is wrong, so long as you know what you have at the end of the month.

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Project Management Tools That Work (Bruce)

Quicken use to be just that, quick, where it was *faster* to use Quicken then to do it manually (write a check, balance checkbook, etc.). That got me going with it – and I couldn’t imagine ever not using it, but as folks here attest, it is now so bloated that it is no longer quick and is hard for new folks to pick up.

Some hints to make Quicken work for basic but essential tracking:

1. Start simple. Just track your most used accounts, usually a checking account and a credit card.

2. Set up those accounts to download from your bank/financial institution. This is where the real benefit comes from, as it tracks the details for you. Use your credit/debit card in particular as the download will have more details (name of establishment, address, etc.)

3. Hit the “one step update” (which actually takes about 3 clicks) to download your details once a week. You will have to categorize all the new entries, but once Quicken knows an entry is for Starbucks, then it will automatically recognize each additional Starbucks charge from THAT Starbucks and assign the same category you did last time for that Starbucks.

4. Use broad categories to start (mine were “discretionary” and “non-discretionary”!). Some of mine are now groceries, diningout, utilities, gas, paycheck, interest, and miscellaneous (throw everything else in here, assign categories when you want to later break out “movies” for example).

5. Reconcile those two account (assuming the one checking and one credit card) each month. What is *great* here is that it is very hard for the reconciliation not to work correctly, because you always get all the transactions from the bank.

6. Want to know how much you are spending at Starbucks? Right click on *any* Starbucks entry and select “Payments made to Starbucks.” You can optionally chose a period (year to date, this month, monthly, last year, etc.). You now know how much you spent at Starbucks (or McDonalds or for gas, etc.)

So I tried I tried mint.com, just to check it out, since it’s been recommended so many times. It works fine, from a technical perspective. My problem is that I can’t think of a way to make it *useful*.

Obviously, I am doing it wrong, but I can’t think of a change I could make that would actually make all these numbers *helpful*. They just look like a bunch of arbitrary numbers to me, except for the two on the left.

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Amanda

@2 Nancy – this is similar to the method I use. It is very effective! I appreciate the decrease in time necessary for budgeting.

I only track weekly the amounts I spend on gas, groceries, fun, etc. I don’t differentiate between gas and eating out. For example if I drive more, I eat out less.

I have an amount budgeted to each specific vacation. Therefore, as long as I’m in the lump sum of that amount I’m happy! I try to jot down the expenses as I go so as to not go over the total amount.

Someone mentioned planning for budgets and that’s the key. If you plan meals and have the ingredients it sure saves me eating out! For trips planning is also the key. My best vacation success I came out $1.99 under budget! I think this is due to reading reviews at tripadvisor.com and viewing the menus at sites I liked. I figured out which ones we could afford (some expensive ones a couple of days a week and mostly cheap ones) and while I didn’t have the mapped out so strictly that we’re having this place on Monday at 2 p.m. having that list of restaurants gave us good choices for whenever we were ready to go.

On this particular trip I didn’t even tally daily. I calculated how much we spent when we got home. That’s what makes me feel that planning is the key.

El Nerdo. I use QB. The key is not having too many accounts. For each paycheck I pull out our weekly budget for daily expenses into two accounts. In week one all of these expenses get lumped here and for week two all the expenses get lumped in that account. I track all of my expenses in liability accounts though. Then I can see how much I have remaining. I put most expenses like phone/internet on cc and do have those in a separate liab acct. I don’t use the income/expense accounts for personal use because it’s easier for me to pull up a balance sheet in the free online version of the software that doesn’t give you the budgets.

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Trish C

Moneywell for OSX. Sounds cliche but it really did transform our financial life.

As far as vacations go, I lump it all as “vacation” not into individual catagories.

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mary w

I fall in the group which doesn’t track expenditures. I haven’t since I reached a point in life where I had enough money for savings, needs and reasonable wants. I do track yearly my net worth.

What I do track for *fun* is for my vegetable garden. I track all costs (seeds, water barrels, fertilizer etc) and weigh all produce to keep a running yearly cost per pound of veggies. Now sure why it gives me such joy to grow organic produce for cheap.

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Michiel Sikkes

Love this article and the comments. Great tips in there and I like the simple “stone age” approach to tracking expenses.

I haven’t really “gotten” the idea of budgets for myself. Oh I do know they are a great way to get control for not over-spending some areas but I always have the idea that planning expenses for the future is much more effective than setting a general budget for certain categories.

Also I use Google Calendar to enter future expenses so I know when they come and I enter the bank account nr. and amount in the comments so I can pay from anywhere and get a reminder for it.

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Austerity Bill

This is a very simple process which just requires an excel sheet and a little bit of time. Put all the sums in and you only have to update once a month.

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Jen

I just use a simple spreadsheet with income on the top, and expenses on the bottom, with totals of each, and the difference between them on the very bottom.

I have done this for the almost seven years I have been married, tracking both of our expenses, and I love being able to go back and compare utility bills between our different houses, grocery expense, etc., just for curiosity. We also do a second page on the same spreadsheet where we track what we spend on Christmas. I scoot it over a column every year, so we know what we got everyone and can get more ideas from past columns.

I love the idea that you have to find what works for you. I think that applies in dieting and other areas of life, too.

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Pat S.

I agree. I really like sites like Mint and other budgeting tools. For me, it’s just nice to have a computer do the math and tracking, although I do make sure to update the categories once a week to accurately reflect my spending in certain categories.
Pathttp://compoundingreturns.blogspot.com

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Phil G

Great responses. I will check out some of the links.

I use GnuCash for actuals and a spreadsheet for budgeting. I have looked for better solutions over the years but so far this has been my method for last 10 years.

What I track has changed. I care about key categories where expense creep is common, like dining out, utilities, and groceries. I don’t care about the details of vacation expenses in my budget. However, the detail is in GnuCash so if I want to know later how much my beach rental was I can find out.

Great post and even greater comments!

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Canadian

I should have mentioned the name of the app I use. It is Expense Tablet and costs all of $0.99.

I made my own Excel spreadsheet after dumping Mint and I love it. I’m really savvy with Excel so it’s very personalized and yes, fancy-ish LOL. I update it every weekday. I keep all of my receipts and update daily. On the weekends when I don’t have access to the internet and my spreadsheet, I track everything in a notebook that is in my purse and update Monday morning. So, it’s a mix of low and high tech that works well for me. I love tracking my income and expenses. It makes me feel very in control and that’s not a feeling I’m used to associating with my money.

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Tim

I’ve been actively budgeting for about 10 years, and have tried everything from software packages (Quicken = bloated & confusing) to home-cooked spreadsheets (lacking functionality), before finally arriving at a balanced approach, that allows us to be hands off, as in not updating the budget every couple of days, while at the same time remaining in full control.

here’s the approach:
1. break down earmarked vs discretionary spending; earmarked money is leaving no matter what, discretionary is where you have the most wiggle room
2. track discretionary expenses throughout the month
3. figure out what a good rate is: month’s total discretionary expenses (that doesn’t put you in the red) divided by number of days in the month. use the average daily spending for an instant reading of how you’re doing this month – spending more (reign it in) or spending less (good job!)? E.g. if your “healthy” rate is $50/day or $100/day, on the 10th of the month, you want the total to be $500 or $1000
4. that’s it!

benefits of this approach for us:
1. i only use YNAB ~twice a month to import and categorize bank/credit card transactions, to get my numbers/tracking jollies on
2. since all of our discretionary spending goes on the bank credit card, one quick look lets me know how we’re doing on any given day of the month.
3. February might be cold, but it’s 2.5 days shorter than your average month. so, if you’re going at the usual rate, you’re automatically in the plus! 🙂

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Brigitte

I couldn’t stand the pen and paper method. Maybe I just like the computer, maybe I’m (ridiculously) unsure of my math skills, but I really like having a digital copy.

I used to use an Excel spreadsheet that was basically just a calendar that added for me. But I didn’t like that I couldn’t track transfers between accounts without screwing up my income and outgoing cash numbers. Plus I was pretty much just tracking bills and paychecks.

Switched to Quicken. Never looked back. You do realize you don’t have to USE every feature that it offers, right??

I love my Quicken. I recently simplified my tracking with a new budget, putting a lot of my smaller categories into a broader “spending money” category. And because I use my debit card almost exclusively so that I don’t forget where all my cash went (I’m REALLY bad at saving receipts!), it’s a simple matter of opening my online banking, typing in the transactions shown, and seeing how my current corresponds to my budget for the month. I have a placeholder item at the end of every budget period that I update regularly to tell me how much spending money I have left.

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Amanda

I use mint to track my expenses and Bank of America’s ‘My Portfolio’ to track my savings and investments.

Mint only works if you are pretty laid back with expense tracking. I only have it check a few accounts, Wells Fargo, Bank of America and our American Express Card. All of those have no problem updating when ever I check in.

Most of our expenses are on a credit card and can be tracked easily. I have some pretty broad categories and then some small ones that I want to keep an eye on. Like I have a ‘shopping’ category that I put everything into that is not food, gas, mortgage or a utility/monthly bill, but then I have a few shopping sub categories like books and clothes. We tend to go a little crazy some months on those things and it nice to have a heads up.

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Mike B.

@JD – We put as much of our food / books / gas into our regular monthly categories as possible at the end of the month. Things that are only travel-related (car rental, hotels, airline tickets) and any excess over our usual budget comes out of our travel savings.

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Mike B.

I started with Quicken in college, but found it too heavy-weight for a student with nothing but a checking account and a debit card. I switched to a text file in Notepad that contained a roughed out budget for the month.

As finances got a little more complex (i.e. income, rent), I moved to an Excel spreadsheet that was a lot like your notebook. The first tab tracked current balances and pending transactions. The other tabs tracked one category apiece (I think they were Giving, Food, Car, Housing, Furniture, and Misc). As I spent money, I deducted it. As I got paid, I made deposits into each category and kept a running total.

My number of categories went up after I got a job, so I switched back to Quicken. While it has its headaches, it makes tracking spending for numerous in-month budget categories handy. I finagle the “Savings Goal” accounts for longer-term deposit-and-deduct accounts like my spreadsheet had.

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Alainne

I’ve found it hard to get into the habit of tracking my daily spending, so I think baby steps may be the way for me to go. I’m currently using OpenOffice spreadsheets to track account balances and investments so I can see at a glance how they’re doing over time. I started doing this monthly, but watching it grow has made me increase the frequency; when I start wanting to do it daily I hope I’ll be able to add a spending log.

As for travel, I keep all receipts (which gives me my accommodations and activities) and jot down any souvenirs as I go (since I’ll need to report that value to customs anyway).

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Prasad N

I now just use a small spiral notebook that fits in my pocket, and transfer details to an excel file once a week.

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Laura

I started tracking expenses after reading Jerrold Mundis’ “How to Get Out of Debt, Stay Out of Debt, and Live Prosperously” and I use his spending record model. I created an Excel spreadsheet for each month with columns for Category, Week 1-2-3-4 (I’m paid weekly), Total, Budgeted, and +/- (Excel calculates Total and +/-). As I go through the month, I enter the numbers in the correct spots; the +/- lets me know how close I am to the budgeted amount and, if over, how much needs to come out of another category to balance the books.

I use primarily cash (credit is only for internet purchases, and debit for gasoline) so I ask for receipts or write down the purchase immediately (usually the latter as vendors are often unwilling to print receipts for cash purchases, even when asked). Once to twice a week, I enter the info onto my spending record, then file (if credit/debit) or throw away (if cash) the receipts/notes.

For vacations, expenses are lumped under “Vacation” if I wouldn’t otherwise have spent the money (e.g., hotel, food, sightseeing). If it’s something I would have bought at home (e.g., a book), then the expense goes into that category.

A small notebook and reliable pen for recording expenses are a must while on vacation.

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El Nerdo

I’ve spoken in favor of Mint before, basically because it’s free, but at the end of the day I have to be honest with myself and admit that it makes my life difficult because it doesn’t handle cash very well– especially cash accounts.

Since I already have Quickbooks for my business, maybe I’ll create a new “business” for my family, petty cash account included. Didn’t we have a post about being “The CEO of your own life” the other day? Although, I have to say, Quickbooks gives me headaches, hives and rashes…

I’ll give Quickbooks it a try, but if I fail, I might break down and buy something more user-friendly, like Quicken.

There used to be a free app for the Mac but ir required manual entry… spending a saturday afternoon checking receipts by hand was no fun.

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Squirrelers

I put together a simple Excel spreadsheet over 10 years ago that would probably work just fine now. My system was to jot down all expenses, and transfer to the spreadsheet every few days. Seemed to work well. Really, the name of the game is to track expenses to save money, but if we spend lots of time on complicated system – we’re spending money indirectly because time is money, right?

Good post, overall. Basic approaches shouldn’t be overlooked.

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Beth

I use an old version of Microsoft Money and it works great for me. I don’t have it pull any data online (everything is entered manually) so it doesn’t matter that this product isn’t being supported anymore.

I agree tracking money makes it more fun to spend. It’s so nice to know I can purchase something special but still be on track for my monthly savings goals. And it’s so fun to watch my net worth go up each month!

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Jennifer Lissette

I use an excel spreadsheet that my husband and I created together. It’s still a manual entry, but it has some added benefits. For one, I can type at 103 wpm but believe me when I say my handwriting is not nearly as fast. It also allows me to separate one transaction into several different categories… a must for those Costco trips where I might buy food, gasoline, trash bags, shampoo, a gift item and a $2 lunch, all in one transaction.

The biggest advantage over pen and paper is the fact that I can sort my data and represent it graphically with a single push of a button. So if I notice we’re running over budget for the month, I can just press a button and see a chart representing our spending. This little feature is extremely helpful.

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Suba

We took a longer than most people (I think) to get control of our expenses. We tried to have a perfect budget and tried to bring everything down. Fail. After a few more failed attempts, we tried a different approach, we didn’t try to control, we just tracked. Tracked meticulously for 6 months. The tracking itself gave us very good control. As we didn’t realize how frequently we were doing things that we thought were once a week/month. And then we started control 1 category at a time. The least favorite one. So it was easy for us not to go over the budget. We concentrated on just bringing that category under control for 2 months so that it will be an effortless thing. Then we attacked the next less important (to us) category by just keeping an eye on the first category. So we took one by one, and got that under control. The more “favorite” the categories got it became difficult, so those took more than 2 months and some tweaking. After almost two years we are completely under control, automated everything and for our regular stuff we stay within budget. We use mint to give us a snapshot on what is left in each category incase we are considering a bigger than normal purchase. We check that to make sure we can afford it that month otherwise it just gets postponed to the next month. All necessities – rent, charity, power, gas, phone are automated, so unless we are out of food for the next meal, the purchase can wait. This works for us.

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retirebyforty

You’ll never stick with pen and pad. It’s too painful.
I use the credit card statement and put it on my blog. That way I know I spent $98 on gas and oil change in January.

For the little discretionary spending, I do not religiously keep track. I have a $100/week allowance and as long as I don’t go over that, it’s fine.

I use Mint to keep track of Net Worth, it’s pretty good for that.

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Anne

I haven’t found my perfect system yet.

I use Quicken as my check register and I balance it every month. However, we use the Costco Amex card for a lot of things. I like to ‘debit’ them out of my register right away so I know how much I’ve spent. The problem is, when the bill comes in, I have to write one big check for the bill. So I delete all my little charges and write one check. Then the expense show up on the wrong month. And if I run a report, for the current month, I am double counting expenses.

So I have a notebook next to my computer to track spending. I only track groceries, transportation, medical expenses, and other. Everything else is fixed in the budget.

That works to keep me on budget(sometimes) but it doesn’t solve my problem of looking at history.

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Stella

I use a free iPhone/iTouch app, Spend, to track spending on things like groceries, entertainment, etc. It’s not dependent on being connected and is very easy to use. I think you can export data in different formats, but I haven’t tried that out yet.
There is a paid version of the app, but I’ve found the free version to be just fine!

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Claire at Saving Money Plan

I agree with the “old-school” bookkeeping method, and I use what I call a “Money Book”…It sounds similar to what you do…

Here’s how I set it up weekly so that I have an ongoing list of spent AND earned…and how I plug that into my ongoing Net Worth doc:

I also use Excel. But I don’t use it as a budget, just as a way to track expenses. I have a sheet for each account (chequeing, cash, savings, visa, etc). Each sheet has 5 columns – date, for, debit, credit, total.

I rarely look it over to see what the trends are, but all the data is there if I ever need to.

The only accounts I don’t track are my investment type accounts: RRSP and TFSA.

Since I list expenses by account and not what they’re for, vacationing is easy to keep track of. It’s no different – did I use cash, visa, debit? The hardest part here is the currency exchange, and usually it just ends up as a debit line “$100 USD” with the amount it cost in CAD as the debit amount.

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Will

Have used many things over the years. Envelopes worked especially well during a really tight period. Would get cash once a month, fill the envelopes and only carry enough cash in the wallet to purchase what was going to buy. Many bills paid by check and they were tracked on paper or Excel.

Currently using iPhone/iPad Apps. Kashbook Free worked well for my needs but this year am trying Ace Budget for normal spending and PocketMoney Checkbook to track the spending from the Smarty Pig accounts. We have two incomes and one is used for monthly bills and the other goes into the Smarty Accounts. Actually is less confusing to track in two different programs. Apps will export info.

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abby

I’ve recently started carrying an envelope in my purse to hold all receipts. I made a simple little spreadsheet that I printed out and attached to the front of it that lists the basic categories and what my budget is per paycheck for those categories. I write every receipt into its category before I put it in the envelope – this way I can see at a glance how I’m doing in each category. I may switch to per month at some point, but right now it’s per paycheck (every two weeks).

Which brings me to my next point – it seems to work better for me if I budget myself per paycheck instead of per month. I know that most times I’ll usually have two paychecks a month, so the monthly budget is about twice that. I have many payments auto withdrawn from my checking account on the same day that my paycheck is direct deposited, so I don’t really miss the money because I don’t see it there. In three paycheck months, that means an extra payment goes towards debt, and I get a bit of extra spending money. Also, thinking about holding myself accountable for two weeks seems more manageable than an entire month. I try not to sweat it if I’m a little over in a category or two, because I know I’m probably under in another one, or I’ll try to make it up on the next two weeks.

This is still a fairly new system for me, but I like the sense of accountability I feel for my money now. I’ve done all the math and using a version of the snowball plan, I can have all my debt except student loans paid off in 18 months!

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mariane

For purchases: I simply make sure the receits are given to me for every thing I buy or spend on and then sit down to enter them in a spreadsheet whenever I have a moment… they always state method of payment… so no need to worry abt that.
When I travel I use an envelope or a small plastic ziplock bag and unload / same at home I just simply empty my wallet from time to time… works for me!

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Andrew

I too use an Excel spreadsheet–actually, I use multiple spreadsheets. One that just shows broad categories, such as “food” or “entertainment”, and others which break those down into smaller sub-categories. A bit much–I know.
One good thing about Excel is that you can waste time creating bar charts, pie charts, etc. in all sorts of colors–really, totally useless but they give you the illusion of having accomplished something!

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Kim

I’m trying to track but it is hard. I miss days and I spend too much on the kids. I feel guilty writing it down. Like a weight journal you have to admit you ate the cupcake. But I need to learn to master this money thing. I find
that a small notebook works for me. I have tried this system for over 20 years off and on and it works the best. Now what do I do with these figures? The money is spent.

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Holly B

I tried Mint, too, and was frustrated for a couple reasons. It doesn’t track cash expenditures, so I couldn’t know what my cash was going to, only that I withdrew $100 from the bank. It also included credit card payments – even when I wasn’t paying interest, just shuffling money around between accounts – so this looked like double counting any purchases made on the credit card.

Now I use the Expense Tracker iPhone app. It’s pretty similar to just writing things down, since you must enter each item manually, but then you have an electronic record. It’s really easy to export the data in a CSV file and use Excel to make plots or whatever you want to do with it.

In general, I’ve been really happy with expense tracking. I think it’s an important step to financial success and has really made me feel more in control of my finances since I’m aware of where it’s all going.

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Laura in Cancun

We use an Excel sheet that we look over every Sunday night.

We have a column for a budgeted amount in each category, which we put into an envelope. As the month progresses, we update another column documenting how much we actually spent. It was hard at first to saty within budget, but now that we’ve been doing it for a few months, we’re often underbudget!

We each have a weekly allowance for transportation, meals and extras, plus a combined weekend budget for fun stuff.

By tracking every penny of my personal weekly expenses, I have cut them from $80 a week to $40 a week! It’s not something I plan on doing every day all my life, but it’s a great way to see when you’re spending on things you don’t have to. I don’t feel more stressed about my weekly allowance even though it’s now cut in half… God only knows why I thought I needed all that weekly cash before I started tracking it! Tracking pennies from time to time truly is miraculous.

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Woodstock

I deleted my Mint account several months ago and created myself a moneycenter.yodlee.com account. I like it better, have had no issues with updates, and find the reporting to be very useful.

As the months go by and more data gets into the system, I believe I will find the service even more valuable, especially from a charting point of view — nothing like color pie charts to let you know of spending going astray.

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Canadian

I use an app on my iPad. It is just a simple way of logging spending by category — no connection to my bank accounts or anything like that. Very simple and I use it religiously.

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Leah

@JD, perhaps I’m weird, but vacations are the one time I have no problem tracking *every* expense. I typically budget a set amount for a vacay (say, I can spend $2,000 on my three week trip). Then, I write down every little thing I spend. I use broad categories (transportation/lodging/postal stuff/ food/museums/sightseeing). I split out museums because I keep track of all the museums I’ve seen worldwide and how much I spent to see them.

I do a running daily total and work out where I am in relation to my overall budget. I generally overestimate my budget so that I have plenty of wiggle room.

I really like this system, as I seem to have an easy time saying “I’ll cook dinner at the hostel tonight for cheap so that I can go parasailing tomorrow and not stress.” My system allows me to prioritize what I want.

I know this would work great in my every day life, but for some reason, I’ve had a hard time getting into it. But for my vacations? Guilt-free and easy to maintain for the win.

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cathleen

I use Quicken for Mac. I love the charts and breakdowns.

We use auto payment for all of our standard bills out of checking account. We use the debit card for all expenses. I download from the credit union once a week, takes about 30 seconds. It categorizes automatically based on previous categorizations. I can easily override or enter new categories.

I print out a report to show my husband, it’s very clear when one category goes over budget, easy to get back on track.

I also keep a simple document with all upcoming, 1-time expenses for the month (this month’s for example: raised bed for garden, truck tuneup, dinner party, etc. with an estimated amount next to it). So that “extra” money in the checking account has already been earmarked for the month. I do this mostly for my husband as I do all the finances and see the numbers every day.

Savings are auto deposited from paycheck.

Very simple, accurate and I enjoy it, which is key.

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Diane

I am with April on this. There is still something to be said about physically writing down what you are spending. The hardest part is making it a habit.

Many years ago (before all the online choices were available) I made the decision to leave the steady corporate job. I needed to know exactly what I was spending and what I was willing to give up. The only way to really know what you are spending is to track all of your spending. I kept a small notebook and wrote down every expense over a $1. Then I put it on a spreadsheet. I kept categories broad, unless I wanted to know what it was costing me. For example, I realized I was spending over $750 a year to have nice nails. An expense that was easy for me to give up.

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Beth

I started keeping track of my budget in January (after falling off the wagon). I use EXCEL.

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Frugal Mama

Hi April,

I agree — low-tech is better for me too. Computer programs can be more trouble than they are worth.

Our low tech method is a chart I made up in Word and that I print out and post on our fridge every month. Hubbie and I write down purchases on the chart when we get home.

Re J.D.’s question: I would prefer dividing out vacation expenses but my husband just lumps it all together into “vacation.” It’s a toss-up: I like being on vacation from my tracking spending, but on the other hand we don’t get a clear picture of our annual spending on things like food.

Good luck with your new method, April. Sounds good!

Amy

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Jay

I like this… this is all my dad does. He has REAL spread sheets (you know, those things that people used before Excel?). They are huge! 10 of them could wallpaper a room!
He showed me his about 10 years ago for the first time. It was the basis for the excel spreadsheet my wife and I have been using for about 9 years now. If you wanted to know, I could tell you what we bought on December 4th 2003 🙂 I have it all!

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Dan

Mint’s not perfect. I really, really wish it was. But it’s good enough for me to not give up on, yet… although I do think about it.

My wife and I went on a 5.5 week trip through SE Asia over xmas. To track spending, I bought a tiny book and just jotted down everything we spent each day. You know what? It was really easy. Since we just had a daily budget for everything beyond lodging, it was easy to track a daily deviation and a weekly deviation. TBH, pen and paper was so easy that if Mint doesn’t get its act together, I may very well just drop them. Although, for my own needs, I might do something just a tad bit fancier with forms in MS Access — I like being able to run reports and queries.

And why, oh why, can’t Mint get the “everything else” feature working it? It can’t be that hard.

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monsterzero

I didn’t know there were templates for tracking personal finances, so I just started using Google spreadsheets to implement double-entry bookkeeping. I buy lunch with my debit card, I insert a new line, put -6.98 under Checking (account) and +6.98 under Restaurant (expense). I “close” my books every quarter by starting a new sheet with zeroed-out expense columns.

It’s surprisingly simple and quick; I’ve been tracking every penny for more than three years.

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Panda

I used to attempt to track in Quicken. And every year I’d do really well until about May/June when it would fall apart. Come January the next year I’d vow to do better. Rinse, repeat.

Mint has actually worked really well for me. I tend to check first thing in the morning and correct any mislabeled transactions. With a few rules in plane to catch the one that it never got right, it’s generally pretty painless now.

And having 14+ months of accurate spending info is pretty cool.

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Kate

I created my own Excel spread sheet. Nothing fancy just a few columns for how much I’ve budgeted, what I’ve actually spent (updated as we make purchases) and a column that Excel calculates out to show me what’s left for that category. I also have a column to make notes in – like an extra food expense b/c of visitors that I might not remember looking back. Each month has it’s own tab and I keep a years worth in each notebook. It’s not perfect and you do have to sit down and plug stuff in, but it truly doesn’t take more than a few minutes. We also pay the majority of our expenses using our Discover (paid off every month) but I often make a purchases at stores that may fall across several categories and my credit card bill can’t show me that.

The nice part about doing it myself is I can be as general or specific as I want. I can track to the penny or just round it off. I can also easily add categories and let Excel keep track of the physical adding/subtracting. I currently have 14 categories: 6 of those are monthly recurring savings categories; 3 are recurring monthly bills and the rest are spending categories I track.

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elena

Also, we’re saving for cars. I transfer $ twice a month from our checking. Keeping track lets me know how exactly much the transfer will be and it’s like a game to me now. I am using simple paper and pen for any overages/irregular expenses to our plan.
Simple enough to do daily, enough info to work for our needs. I like online tracking, but haven’t found a system that works for me yet that I use consistently.

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Maggie

I use Excel, I have a running register account. For my groceries, I do a montlhy shop at Costco, then I put $100 on a Kroger gift card that give me back 5% to my son’s school. That combined with about $50 a week in cash is what I allot for perishable groceries. I’m not obsessive about my catagories, just my running balances. So since I mostly use my debit card, I can easily record the expenditure in my spreadsheet.

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Kate

Mint doesn’t work in our neck of the woods, and although our bank offers a sort of expense trackign system, I had the same problem with the “lumpig” of expenses. A trip to Costco (part food, part books, and part clothes) would show up as $150 of “Misc”, and all of my “Pay Yourself First” savings counted as spending since it was being transferred out of that account.

I also tried pen and paper tracking for our food budget, split by “Meat”, “Fruits and Veggies”, etc. but after 6 months of consistent spending across all the categories, I elected to stop poring over each and evry grocery bill.

At the recommendation of another PF blog (sorry I can’t remember the name to give credit!) I started using the “Pennies” app for my iPod Touch. I can enter things as quickly as I could in a notebook, and still export the data. Entertainingly, it actually adds *itself* to your list of expenses- a great way to cure you of the iTunes “it doesn’t feel like I spent anything!” mentality.

I just started using Pennies this week though, so I don’t have a good sense of how well it will work for me long-term yet.

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rb

I tried Mint, Quicken, Doughhoung, and still couldn’t do a budget. What finally worked for me is one of the basic standard budgets that came with Excel. One column for anticipated amt for an expense and the next column for what I really did spend. I input data off and on throughout the week and it works, FINALLY.

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Dimitri

YNAB.

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Wade

I’m a little biased, but I track my expenses by entering them to my budget at http://www.recurtrack.com. The site allows me to add expenses and place them in categories that match the budget that I’ve created on there. It also helps me keep an eye on my spending room in each category. It is honestly the first time that I have stuck to keeping track of my finances after trying Quicken years ago and spreadsheets on Excel.

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Josh S

EEBA is the best! https://www.eebacanhelp.com
We just set up a few important categories, and then we can enter our expenses on the computer or on our smartphones. It’s online, so it’s always up-to-date, but the smartphone app keeps a copy of your data too, so you can see where you’re at without a data connection.
It’s a lot simpler than Mint or Quicken or other solutions with tons of options, and it does all the math for us so we don’t have to deal with the drawbacks of pencil-and-paper.
And since my wife and I are working off of the same database, we don’t have to wonder what expenses are recorded in the other person’s notebook, we can see real-time information right before we make a purchase.
We love it!

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Mom of five

We don’t break down vacation expenses. It’s just one giant category – food, activities, souvenirs, etc all lumped together. We keep a running tally so spending doesn’t get out of control and we don’t go too far past our agreed upon budget. We’ve never actually come in under budget on a vacation, but we’ve never really killed it either. This year, we’re much more conscious of our spending so this may be the year we finally beat the budget.

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ArandomPerson

I use paper and pencil tracking. I have tried a few computer programs (including simply spread sheets mimicing my paper ones) but always gave up on them. My sheets spreadsheets with each catagory having its own line and I enter date, method pay, and amount for each expense.

So I update once a week, by hand, using different colored inks. It takes anywhere from 15 to 45 minutes depending on my spending.

For Vacation spending I tend to do as JD Roth: everything ends up in a few major classes like transport, lodging, food, and everything else.

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Lauro Wolff Valente

Hi,

I tried several times to track every penny I spent. The longest I could persist with it was eight months.

But then I started to notice my expenses were really balanced, almost never going out of the average.

And I knew excactly where I was spending money.

After those eight months, I started to stop with this. I retook the strategy some months ago, but still did not see that this would aggregate value to my life, since my expenses are nearly the same every month.

I pay everything with credit card and my monthly payment to it is around the same value every month.

Instead of tracking every penny I spent, I started to plan better and controll the final value for expenses. If in one month I spend more, I go to the credit card excerpt and check out what is out of the plan.

It’s much easier for me and it does the trick I need.

So I decided not to track every penny I spend.
And it fits perfectly for me.

Bottom line, for me, nowadays, planning works much better than controlling, despite the fact that I do not opt out of controlling, I do, but acording to my plan, not the oposite.

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Meg

I agree that it is really frustrating when Mint doesn’t update. Luckily, my accounts have been working correctly for a few months now, so I think they have the bugs worked out, at least for the bank I use.

The only other problem with Mint is that it is easy to make a very complicated budget with too many categories – I had to work to get mine down to about ten.

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leslie

JD – Welcome back! I just lump everything I spend on vacation under a “vacation” category. Really…why separate it out. Yes, you ate out or bought books or paid for entertainment of some sort. However, would you have done those specific things if you weren’t on your vacation? Since they aren’t part of your everyday expenditures then I consider them part of the vacation category.

I am kind of a nut about tracking my expenses. I use YNAB and track pretty close to the penny. I used to be very strict about getting exact amounts but I have loosened up a bit because tracking some of the misc. cash stuff was driving me crazy. I still track more or less what we spend cash on but I do have a Misc. Cash line item to catch whatever amount we spend but didn’t track specifically (generally under $30 a month). We put most everything on our debit card so that I can easily go in to my bank account every few days and download the transactions. It takes me about 10 minutes every couple of days to keep up with it which is time I consider very well spent.

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Jon

Check Fu! is a snappy way to track expenses and plan your spending. It uses flexible tagging rather than strict categories.

You can also allocate your money on the fly, so you’re not locked into a strict budget that breaks when, say, your car needs new shoes.

I’m tracking in notebook too – I’ve tried online systems & spreadsheets but I prefer doing it in a notebook, even if it means having to do the maths myself (probably a good brain exercise!). I track what I bought, where, when & categorise it – food, travel, clothes etc.

To start in a good, frugal way, I even reclaimed the notebook – an old half-used work expenses tracker. The old pages were ripped out & filed then I was good to go, for free! 😉

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Mom of five

Putting everything on the credit card except for our adult allowance has worked wonders for us. We still can’t see where our cash spending money is going, but that’s kind of the point.

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Nicole

The only tracking we do is looking at our credit card bills and check registers once a month. Almost all of our spending goes on the credit cards. Our utilities provide handy charts so I can compare our usage over time and I like that, even though it doesn’t actually change anything (it can indicate if there’s a leak somewhere).

Back when we had no money, there was so little spending that I was pretty much able to keep it all in my head, though I also used check registers and cc receipts then too.

With “vacations” I keep receipts and put notes on them… but that’s generally because I’m getting reimbursed for my expenses and DH and DC are not.

Welcome back, JD! Looking forward to tomorrow’s post. (Though I hope it won’t be about how you’re planning on moving to Africa to live a simpler life.)

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John

I have tried Mint and a similar service offered through my credit union. I gave up on both of them because there was always a hassle with accounts not updating. I continue to use a combination of MS Money (used mainly for account registers) and a homemade spreadsheet in Open Office to track spending and savings. It works well for me. I am using MS Money 2004 and I hope it keeps working. I don’t use any of the automated online features, but I do download transactions and reconcile them in Money. I have looked at some of the open source alternatives to MS Money but they tend to be too complicated for my needs.

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BB

We use only checks or debit card tied to checking account for everyday spending. Just a glance online or at the check register tells us how much gas or groceries were.

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J.D. Roth

My body is still on Africa time, so I’m up early today. One of my tasks after I finish tomorrow’s post is to do my finances. My own return to expense tracking has worked well so far. I feel much more in control of my spending than I did at the end of 2010. (Again, I wasn’t spending beyond my means before, but I didn’t feel like I knew where everything was going.)

I’d love to hear how people track spending while on vacation, though. I can’t do it very well. I end up just lumping everything together as “Vacation”, even when there are individual expenses for books, clothes, and dining out. Maybe that’s fine, but it seems like I should do better than that…

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Dan

My wife and I put as many purchases as possible during the month onto our Discover card so that we can get the cashback bonus. (We always pay the bill in full every month.)

One of the side benefits of putting pretty much all of our purchases onto the same card is that most cards (and some bank accounts) have some sort of expense tracking system. For our broad overviews of where our money is going, I log into Discover and look at their spend analyzer, which gives me a good view of what we’ve been doing over the last month, year, etc. It actually works really well.

For the few expenses that come directly out of our bank account, I just log into our bank account and look at what’s there. We bank with Wells Fargo, and they also have a “money map,” but I don’t like it as much as Discover’s. For the most part, I just look at the account history to find anything unusual or to spot any developing trends.

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Pamela

I ask all the students in my first time home buyer classes to track their expenses for the first week so they can see if their money is going where they think it is. Nearly everyone finds it worthwhile.

To the folks who just hate it, I suggest they track expenses for a couple of weeks every year. Although not ideal, it provides a helpful snapshot. And an ideal system doesn’t help anyone if they don’t use it.

I hand out a little card with some basic spending categories on it. It’s small enough to tuck in a wallet or purse and easy to jot notes on. The card has enough room to track a week’s expenses.

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Anonymous

I use a budget that I developed and customized on Excel. It’s practically real-time because as the week progresses, I adjust the itemized expense columns and the income fields(multiple sources). It’s quick, easy and gives me a snapshot of where I am at a glance.

I also have cummulative expense columns as well for Medical/Dental, vacations, annual expenditures, etc.

That works well enough for us.

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Nancy L.

I don’t bother trying to break down the difference between the $5 I spend on shampoo and the $5 I spend on a treat at a cafe. I know that if I’m spending too much on either, it will negatively affect my budget, so rather than waste a lot of energy trying to track it down to the penny, I just keep my expenditures within a weekly budget. It takes me about 10 minutes weekly to stay on top of my budget, and it’s very low tech. I just have a notebook to track my monthly expenses. Bonus is that the notebook keeps all my bills in one place!

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LifeAndMyFinances

Since my wife and I have recently moved across the country, our tracking has been a bit lax too. It seems that we are going out to eat more, which means spending more on groceries, but we haven’t taken note because of the added expense of the move.

In March, hopefully things will be back to normal. Once we again have our regular expenses, I figure we’ll be tracking expenses better as well. Thanks for the reminder!

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